🔗 Share this article

Bestowed upon a select group, the designation of Acclaimed Auteur can serve as a source of pride and pressure. On the beneficial side, it can provide a shield: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this lens, film scholars may feel pressured to justify even their weakest efforts. (The logic is that a disappointing film by a Prestigious Auteur is still superior to the best work of a commercial director.) One downside is that such honorifics can confine a creative to a constrained space, seeking out material befitting a Noted Film-maker; another is that the dismay when a project falls flat is even more pronounced. A high-profile test case has made its way to Netflix in the film by Kathryn Bigelow A House of Dynamite, a underwhelming entry that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any measure – seems nailed on for only one honor this season: that for Gravest Disappointment.

Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey

To understand why the film has disappointed many, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of versatile and dynamic movies: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, police drama Blue Steel, the enduring action film starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an electrifying sci-fi suspense story, shaped by the Rodney King case, which also served as a warning tale about the dangers of escaping from the real world to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more aware of this than her ex-partner and writer James Cameron, now preparing the release of Avatar 3.) Yet following the turn of the millennium, with her reputation growing, Bigelow – like her native country – was forced on the defensive. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a fractious conversation with the country’s extended past of racism.

It's easy to see why a director with this background might be attracted to Dynamite’s script – penned by Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief who scripted Netflix’s latest show starring Robert De Niro Zero Day – and why the streamer would vigorously back a atomic anxiety film after Oppenheimer’s Academy Awards dominance. (One concept for the new film: imagine Oppenheimer in the present day?)

The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses

Dynamite is at its most compelling early on, portraying in a realistic timeframe the 19 minutes in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific by unidentified actors is picked up on screens of a American military installation in Alaska and alerted to the White House situation room, traveling to what everyone learns is its destination: the heart of Chicago. In this initial part, Bigelow and Oppenheim briskly accelerate the stakes while participating in an compelling countdown strategy: we’re left pondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the chronometer expires.

The answer – and this is where the letdowns start – is back to the beginning: the film then shifts between the viewpoints of those senior officials (Tracy Letts’ military officer, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the opening scene glimpsed or heard only in passing. From a narrative standpoint, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section multiple times, each repetition adding on contested bureaucratic steps while moving all parties toward the anticipated detonation. Prior Bigelow films had a tight grip on action and consequence; her most successful works as a Esteemed Director, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were inherently about outcomes. But here, the triggering event is also the endgame; the narrative captivates at the very second the film concludes. The characters are left wondering: “Is this the end?” We are, too, for distinct motivations.

Stylistic and Conceptual Issues

While the scenario cycles in diminishing returns, like a pessimistic time loop, we’ve sufficient moments to consider the harmful influence streaming budgets has had on the look of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite seemed dully conventional, Barry Ackroyd’s rushed shaky camerawork recalling 24 or The West Wing or recent Netflix content recycling the same sets, extending to Zero Day. If Bigelow the Noted Visual Film-maker vanishes, so too does Bigelow the Noted Feminist Film-maker: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that initial segment as possibly one more of this director’s resilient career-driven characters, exits prematurely, so again it’s left to a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow infused into her more genre-oriented early hits is lost in this project; maybe after Detroit’s commercial underperformance, the film-maker felt she had to restrain her bold choices, but a script this verbose required some offsetting dramatic intensity.

Central Dread and Concluding Thoughts

The fear A House of Dynamite most effectively inspires, then, isn’t nuclear annihilation, but a director’s terror of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it progresses, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been eclipsed by contemporary, reframing developments. What this story takes for granted is that those in charge of critical decisions would be qualified professionals, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where earlier Bigelow films felt like intensely involved commentaries on their time, Dynamite – the initial of this director’s latest projects to fall somewhere between oversight, diversion and total insignificance – instead spends two listless hours struggling aimlessly behind the curve. It’s not tense for a reason: even before the stray rocket first appears on sensors, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.